


ōkami

by theformerone



Series: the ballad of the slug sage [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Haruno Sakura, Gen, Kakashi has no idea what is going on, Sakura is bros w the forest, Slug Sage Sakura
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-08 05:40:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13451682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theformerone/pseuds/theformerone
Summary: Sakura is on his ancestral lands. For some reason.





	ōkami

Kakashi does not live in the Hatake compound. He hasn't since his father's death. The place feels hollow, cold. Un-lived in. Died in. 

So when the wards flare and let somebody in, Kakashi is surprised to say the least. 

It wouldn't be the first time someone had tried to get in. There were vandals back before his father died, and sometimes after. Graffiti, or attempts at it had been made on the outer walls. His father hadn't bothered to paint over it, but Kakashi had for a little while. Gai had held him on his shoulders to paint over the worst of it. It was a little moment of childhood, somehow still overshadowed with the weight of his father's shadow. 

When Kakashi became the Copy Cat (and wasn't that a change, a lifetime, a generation away from the White Fang, from the wolf clans of the mountains that once prowled the forests of Konoha, messengers for Ōyamatsumi, a massive pack whittled down to two, then one, then nothing at all when people began to call him "cat"), the graffiti stopped. 

Even when he was younger, the wards never let anyone in. Just tagging "disgrace" and "murderer" on the outer walls became a compromise. 

But now, a lifetime after suicide, Kakashi's blood hums as someone,  _someone_ is welcomed into the compound. Someone the wards recognize. Generations ago the Hatake had used blood and chakra as markers for their wards. Those born into the Hatake were born on the soft ground, were given little cuts on their infant palms so that the wards would know pack. Those who married into the family were drawn in with their left hand coated in chakra and their right hand bleeding. 

It ensured that there was no way one could fake being a Hatake to gain access to their grounds. You could get the blood, but it was difficult to get the chakra as well. Strong arming a captive Hatake was another way, but their compound was on the outskirts of the village, towards the Hokage Mountain. An attacker would have to get through the entire village with their captive. The Hatake were descended from wolves; they didn't do captivity well. 

Kakashi is the last of the Hatake blood in Konoha. Nobody has his blood and nobody has his chakra. He isn't married. He doesn't have children. He is the only person who has access to his clan grounds. But for some reason, a stranger is inside. 

He had been summoned to the tower for a mission briefing, but he'd been planning on stopping by the Memorial Stone which would've made him about half an hour late. He detours (and the guilt lances through him, Obito, Rin, Minato-sensei, Obito, Rin, Minato-sensei, Obito, Obito, _Rin, Rin, Rin_ ) and heads towards his old home. 

The Hatake compound was of a size with the Inuzuka to accommodate the size of their ninken. The Hatake had summoned wolves before Kakashi was born. His father was the last one to hold the contract. It's still in his bedroom, hidden away under layers of dust and shame. Kakashi never fished it out, preferred his pack of tame dogs to a group of wild things. It has nothing to do with his father. It has nothing to do with trying to forget. 

The compound is quiet, still. Kakashi runs his fingers along the outer walls; moss has grown over the worst of the graffiti. The walls seem to have been reclaimed by the forest just behind them. It seems - fair, almost. Even if it is becoming an eyesore. 

As long as Kakashi is alive, and as long as he is healthy enough to have children, the Hatake compound will stay standing. When he ends his clan with his death, a few years will pass out of respect, and once they do whoever wears the hat can have it razed to the ground to make room for whoever needs it most. 

The wards thrum beneath his touch. They're - mad at him. They prickle at his fingers, lightning affinity chakra from his father's mother snapping at him. The wards took in personality when they took in chakra. In this way, the Hatake would never really be lost until their home was destroyed. It was also a failsafe against invasions; the wards could feel if chakra was agitated or stressed and was capable of responding accordingly. Kakashi remembered the heavy divide he felt in the chakra of the wards when his father came home without his squad. Many of the Hatake were livid and refused to let him in. Just as many wanted to buffet against him and soothe the pain. In the end, they settled on indifference. 

Kakashi might have learned his own from the wards. 

"Sorry, granny," Kakashi grumbles even as her chakra disrupts the flow of his own in his hand. Hatake Haname had died shortly after Kakashi entered the academy. She had a big shaggy wolf dog named Mamesuke who followed her everywhere. There were pictures somewhere in the compound of a three year old Kakashi riding the dog. He doesn't know where they are now. 

As he steps inside the complex, the wards push back at him. He hasn't been here in years, but he knows they recognize him. They're mad at him, uniformly so. They let him in because they have to, because they are family in blood and chakra and name. But Kakashi has not been a good son, and the wards agree. 

He can feel the barest touch of his father's water affinity, brushing over his covered cheek. Kakashi presses forward. He'd forgiven his father, had apologized to him for not understanding why he did what he did after he lost Obito, again after he lost Rin, and had wept over his grave when Minato-sensei was lost to him as well. But he isn't here for penance or understanding. There is someone in his den, and he needs to know who. 

The chakra signature he roots around for is familiar, but he can't catch a specific scent on the wind. It only smells like forest; like soft wet earth and cool streams in summer. It is a water smell, a kind of light syrup smell that's as distinct as it is anonymous. It's difficult to follow, so he focuses entirely on the chakra. 

He moves quickly, not bothering to amble around the house Haname-baa-chan had lived in with Yoji-jiji before he died. He moves around the houses where aunts and uncles lived, cousins, too, and he absolutely doesn't look twice at his own home. Doesn't think he can even smell the barest hint of wintergreen that he remembers his mother smelling of, or the pine needle scent of his father. 

He ends up in a forested area he hasn't seen since he was very young, younger than he was before he entered the academy. He hadn't been allowed to venture this far on his own. He always had to have an adult with him. It feels strange; the woods themselves change. They are denser, more hard packed than the Shodaime's forests. They smell more wet, more green, more alive. 

The chakra signature takes him on a slight incline, and as he moves deeper into the forest, he has to move branches out of his line of sight. He has to sacrifice a measure of his stealth; these forests are dense, not walked in by humans, and have not been forced to adapt. Kakashi is only a little out of his depth. 

Abruptly he stops when he feels the chakra signature move. He presses himself to the ground and peers from beneath the underbrush. 

It's Sakura. Sakura is on his ancestral lands. For some reason. 

He debates whether or not he should open his mouth to accuse her of trespassing, but her appearance tops him. Sakura looks so, very different. 

Her hair is longer than it had been before she left on that three month mission of hers. It's swept up behind her head but would definitely be as long as Tsunade's, if not a little longer if she left it down. Her feet are bare and she's in a plain white yukata. Her palms are at her sides, and Kakashi can just barely see two wide black circles on the backs of her hands. 

She is murmuring something too quietly for him to hear, but then she sits down tidily, with her hands in her lap. She lights two sticks of incense and sticks them in the ground before her. Above her head is a white torii, and just behind it is a statue of a stone wolf. 

Kakashi has never seen this before, and he is very interested in why exactly Sakura of all people, is there. 

He stays there for some time, watching her sit. She stays for precisely one hour before she bows, stands, and begins to make her way out of the forest. Kakashi holds his breath as she passes him, and she doesn't notice he's there. Or at least, she doesn't acknowledge that he's there. 

In front of the wolf statue, there is a plate of wet, red steak. 

* * *

Kakashi is perplexed. 

He is most assuredly late for his mission briefing. Tsunade doesn't throw anything at him, so she's probably at least a little buzzed. He gets landed with a two week bodyguard detail along the border of Iwa and Ame. When he returns, he doesn't head straight for his apartment in the Jounin Quarter. He goes back to the Hatake compound.

He slips through the wards which hum. They're guarded, not unhappy that he's there but too stubborn to welcome him back into the fold. There's the water touch feeling of his father's chakra, but Kakashi is moving too quickly towards the torii in the forest and the wolf statue behind it. 

There are two sticks of incense that have burned down to nothing, filling the little pocket of trees with the smell of sandalwood. There is the same plate, but this time, with pork chops on it. 

Kakashi wonders what ate the steak. 

* * *

He begins splitting his time between the Memorial Stone and the Hatake Compound. 

Sakura is there at least once a week, always in her white yukata with her hair piled on top of her head. Always barefoot, always with those strange black circles on her hands that disappear as she turns around. Always burning incense, always leaving bloody hunks of meat in front of the wolf statue. 

After a month of doing this (Sakura leaving meat in the forest and Kakashi watching her do it), she deviates from her pattern. 

She rolls up the sleeves of her yukata, uses a suiton to fill up a bucket she must have gotten from inside one of the houses, and she starts to clean. 

Sakura scrubs every porch, every floor, every piece of polished wood in the compound until it gleams. Then she tidies up kitchens and bedrooms, beats the dust out of blankets and pillows. She washes dishes, dries clothes. She moves fallen tree branches away from the compound proper. She repairs broken beams, apparently having learned carpentry on that long mission of hers. She rips weeds out of vegetable gardens and plants new crops and flowers. 

It takes her another month, but Sakura restores the Hatake Compound to what it looked like when Kakashi was young and his family name was something to be proud of. 

And every week, no matter what, Sakura always sits in front of the torii and the wolf behind it, and leaves an offering. 

It's only a little while after that, that Kakashi discovers who is taking the offerings. 

* * *

He had assumed that maybe Sakura removed them, threw them away every time she returned. He had wanted to catch her doing it for some reason, a peculiar compulsion driving him through the clean complex towards the densely packed forest it guarded. 

He gets there before she does and presses his stomach to the ground in his usual spot. He waits, watching for some time until there is a rustle behind the white gate. 

From deeper within the forest, a white wolf unfurls out of the darkness. 

It is strange looking, with intelligent black eyes and thick tufts of fur. It looks almost like Mamesuke had, but this wolf is massive, much too large to be anything that occurs naturally in this world. At its heels are strange wisps of smoke and cloud. 

It dips its head down to the meat Sakura had left the time before, two tidy cuts of venison. It sniffs them, then rolls its big grey-blue tongue out of its mouth to gobble them up.

Kakashi holds his breath and knows that this is why he was never allowed this deep into the forest when he was a boy. 

"I know you are there," the wolf says, voice low in its belly. 

Kakashi freezes and wonders if he should say anything, and if so, what. 

"Of course you do, ōkami-sama," answers Sakura's bright voice. "I've been making too much noise to get past you."

The girl is in her white yukata with her hair up, but on her shoulders is the carcass of a deer. It's still bleeding, and it's red life stains Sakura's pristine garment. 

"You are not my blood," the wolf says, "but you have repaired the dens of my former charges and bring me offerings."

Sakura does not move beneath the torii. She stops a respectable distance away from it, and carefully slides the deer off of her shoulders. 

"You have been hungry for a very long time, ōkami-sama," Sakura says. 

She takes a couple of steps back and gets down onto her knees. The deer's blood is a startling brand across her white yukata. 

"But Shikkotsu Forest has not forgotten you, and neither have I."

Shikkotsu Forest? That was a sage region, where the slugs resided. Sakura's extended absence must have been because she was getting her contract with the summons. 

A sudden pang lances through Kakashi, surprising him. She hadn't told him. And he hadn't asked. He hadn't seen hide nor hair of her since she had returned, had only just discovered her again when the wards told him someone was on their property. He had known she was back, had haunted the window of her hospital room for the two nights she was there. She was only under observation, to make sure she was well, but Kakashi's stomach had churned nonetheless, paranoid. He had stood sentry those two nights. He wondered if she knew. He hoped that she didn't. And he hoped that she did.

"Shikkotsu?" the wolf asks. "So you are one of Onyomi's?"

Sakura nods.

"I thought I had recognized your markings. They have not been seen in this world for quite some time."

The wolf steps out from beyond the torii and begins to circle Sakura. Kakashi wants to leap up, wants to snatch her by the waist and drag her bodily out of this place he doesn't understand. Away from the birthright that he abandoned. 

"And what are you to the one thousand slugs of Shikkotsu Forest?" 

The wolf dwarfs Sakura. It is big enough to be a summons, but too large, to oppressive to be that either. From the bowels of his memory comes the thought,  _'It is a spirit'_. 

Kakashi remembers, vaguely, the stories he had been told as a boy. How the Hatake were the protectors of the wolf spirits that dwelled in the mountains. That their strength and their senses had been gifts in return for generations of protection. How one day, it would fall to his shoulders as clan leader, to continue their generations old bargain with the wolf spirits. 

"I am their emissary," Sakura replies. "I will be taking care of you from now on, as well as the spirits of the Nara forest."

The wolf huffs. 

"Itsukushima and Kasuga have many to attend to them. They do not need your help."

Sakura shrugs one shoulder. 

"That is true," she says, "but it is what I swore to Onyomi and to Shikkotsu. What's more, they gave me their blessing to slaughter one of their own to feed you. They know you are hungry."

The wolf turns on her then, snapping its great jaws in front of her face. Kakashi is moving before he can even think to, has a hand on Sakura's shoulder. He would be shoving her back behind him, creating hand signs meant to kill the beast, if her small hand hadn't come over his and stopped him. 

"Kakashi-sensei," she murmurs. "I'd been wondering when you'd come out of hiding."

He flicks his eyes between her and the wolf, whose jaws are too big to be believed, whose blue-grey tongue is reared back, whose white teeth are many, who could probably swallow them both of it wanted to. 

"This," the wolf spits, "is my legacy."

Kakashi, funnily enough, is wounded by that. He was only a boy when he was told about the spirit, so young that his mind had written it off as a story rather than fact. His father had died before he learned how to take care of this great spirit, before he knew what his obligations were. And now Sakura was here, tending to the spirit, repairing the compound, doing all the things that Kakashi as the first born son should have been doing his entire life. 

"A wolf called a cat," the spirit growls, "who abandoned his den when his father died."

Sakura's hold tightens on Kakashi's hand. 

" _He_ is the reason I am hungry," the spirit rumbles. " _He_ has forgotten his family's promise to me,  _he_ has let me starve these many years."

"And now you, emissary of Onyomi," the wolf spirit continues, "you presume that you will repair this rift by bringing me your offerings and cleaning my dens? You think that you may earn my trust by bringing me meat and smoke for offerings?"

Sakura yanks on his arm then with that strength that she inherited from Tsunade. It drags Kakashi to his knees beside her. Her arm then reaches for the back of his neck, and before he can panic, she shoves him forward onto his forehead.

He wonders if she's faster than him, or if he's surprised. He settles on a combination of the two.

"I swore to the slugs of Shikkotsu that I would protect the spirits that inhabited the Nara and Hatake lands. I am fulfilling my promise to them," Sakura says. "I do not presume that you trust me, ōkami-sama. You are old and wise; I am a child. Regardless of my blood, your lands are now under my protection. I will not fail you."

The ōkami snarls, baring its many white teeth. 

"That is what the Hatake said, and now I have starved for twenty years."

Sakura's fingernails dig into the sides of Kakashi's neck. It is a study in concentration to not rip off her arm where it meets her elbow. 

"The Hatake were not sages when they made you their promises," she replies. "I know what is at stake if I lie to you, ōkami-sama."

Sakura is a slug sage and somehow Kakashi missed it. Fuck. _Fuck._

But the wolf spirit seems to relax at that. The snarl falls of its face, and it sits back on its haunches. Its tail wraps around its feet, big black eyes burrowing into Sakura.

"A sage?" the wolf asks.

Sakura does the incredible. She rises, releases her hold on Kakashi's neck. Her eyes are shut and when she opens them, they are pale green and blind. On the backs of her hands are those markings he had only seen half of; there are two wide circles on her forehead, and long wide swaths of black that reach under her eyes and back to her temples.

"A sage," Sakura repeats, "and emissary. I have sworn to protect these lands to Onyomi, to Shikkotsu, and to nature itself."

The wolf narrows its eyes at her.

"Do you mean to take on the contract I made with the Hatake those many moons ago?" he asks.

Something rabid, wild, and instinctual inside of Kakashi screams at him to say something, to deny Sakura whatever bargain she's attempting to make with the wolves. These spirits are his. He has neglected them yes, but they are his birthright. Their chakra is part of his, they are written into the wards of his family estate. He cannot let them go, even if he has not protected them as he should have.

"No," Sakura says, and Kakashi's heart thumps in its chest. Thank god.

"I will be your emissary," Sakura continues, "your voice in the human world, your representative if you will. I have fed you because you have been hungry, and I will continue to bring you offerings."

She looks down, puts her blind green eyes on Kakashi and somehow, he knows she can see him. Can see him in every way that matters.

"Your contract is with the Hatake, ōkami-sama," she says. "They will serve you until they are no longer a family. If they die out, then my disciples will serve you."

Kakashi looks from Sakura to the wolf spirit in front of her. Its clever eyes are narrowed on him and they don't let up for anything.

"If the Hatake fail you again," Sakura says, drawing both their gazes back to her, "then I will take up your contract."

The wolf laughs at that, but the sound is not joyful or pleasant. It is sharp, husky, and inhuman.

"No two families may protect a spirit at once," the wolf says. "You must kill him - "

"And bring his body to you," Sakura interrupts cleanly. Kakashi wonders where on earth Sakura finds the courage to interrupt a spirit easily the size of a full grown bear.

"His body will nourish you in death," she continues, "because he did not in life. I understand the promise I am making to you, ōkami-sama."

The wolf rises to its feet, and Sakura goes back down to her knees. She deactivates her sage mode, and her black markings slowly fade away.

"Be sure that you do, child," the ōkami says. "I will be watching for his progress."

Sakura bows, and Kakashi follows. He presses his hands and feet onto the earth before the spirit. He listens as it picks up the deer between its jaws and tugs it behind the great white gate and into the forest. 

"Of course, ōkami-sama."

When it is gone, Kakashi rises first. He looks over at his student in her blood stained white garment, and wonders when and where she found the time to grow up without him. He knows he hasn't been a good teacher; he's been shit even on good days. He taught her - tree walking. That wouldn't save her life in a fight. 

He had been too focused on the boys, too focused on himself and Obito in these strange forms. He had forgotten Rin the first time around, it was no wonder he had forgotten Sakura now. But where Rin had died, Sakura had fastened herself to the Godaime's side, had made chuunin without his help, had gone and become a slug sage before he had even noticed she was gone. 

Kakashi feels guilty. Overwhelmingly guilty. It is one thing to focus on the dead. It is another thing entirely to ignore the living. 

"Come on, Kakashi-sensei," Sakura says, rising and rousing him from his thoughts. "I'm pretty sure I could take you in a fight, but it'd cost me like, both my legs or something ridiculous like that." 

She gets to her feet in one fluid movement, and reaches out her hand to help him up. They haven't spoken since that one awful conversation before she left on her contracting mission to Shikkotsu, and Kakashi wonders where she found the time to forgive him for being so - well, himself.

"And I like my legs. So I'm gonna teach you how to take care of a spirit, and of the forest, understand?"

She pulls him up; he barely has to rise to his feet. Sakura takes her hand back to herself and dusts off any grass from her bottom. She starts walking. Kakashi follows. 

"There are some old scrolls in your grandmother's study you have to read. She transcribed some of the oral traditions, which makes this a bit easier."

The complex is coming into view ahead of them, clean and bright. Not lived in, but cared about. A place that matters to someone. Almost, but not quite, maybe one day could be, home. 

"Hm," he says. "Maybe I should start calling you Sakura-sensei."

She laughs at that, and it's a noise he hasn't heard since - well, he really can't remember the last time she laughed in front of him.

"You absolutely should," she says, smiling.

The wards thrum around them as they enter his grandmother's house. Many doors have closed between he and Sakura, he knows this, but Kakashi decides that if he can be a good son to his family, a good guardian to the ōkami so many years after he has failed them, he can afford to be a good friend to Sakura now, a good student now, even if he hasn't been a good teacher in the past.

**Author's Note:**

> happy ending w a little bit of teeth. i love kakashi and sakura as bros and i think the idea of her like murdering him and feeding him to a wolf spirit is enough to shock him out of being an emotional wreck and into being a decent person for maybe 20 minutes at a time.
> 
> comments are food for starving artists
> 
> thank you for reading xx


End file.
